


in each place and forever

by bayloriffic



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26538100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bayloriffic/pseuds/bayloriffic
Summary: In another dimension this is exactly what’s happening.
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	in each place and forever

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in May 2010. Title and summary from "Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem" by Bob Hicok.

That first night, that night after the hospital, Juliet brings James home with her.

The ride to her house is a little strange. They don’t talk much, but he keeps his hand on her thigh the entire drive there, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles against the smooth skin of her knee. She feels like she can’t quite catch her breath, like this isn’t real at all, just some dream that she’s going to wake up from at any second.

When they finally make it through her front door, they can’t keep their hands off each other, stripping off their clothes as they stumble back to her bedroom.

They fall into bed together, and everything is so familiar and strange and when she’s moving over him, she has to close her eyes, everything feels too much and too strong and, just. It’s a little overwhelming, is all.

Afterward, they lay in her bed together, their bodies touching all up and down and she has missed him so much.

Juliet lays her head on his chest, full of this feeling like she’ll never stop smiling. He smells different, like cologne, something light and vaguely spicy. It’s nice but incredibly disconcerting and she realizes that she misses the smell of cheap bar soap, the kind that used to come in on the sub every few months.

It’s a small thing, something that doesn’t even matter, but once she realizes it, she can’t stop focusing on it. It makes her feel a little on edge, like her whole body is buzzing with electricity, but as she lies there next to him, she tries to relax and eventually, she drifts off to sleep.

A few hours later, she wakes up a jerk, gasping, her whole body shaking, this horrible feeling in her stomach like she’s falling, and falling, and falling.

“Juliet?” James says, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He blinks at her, confused. “You okay?”

“James,” she gasps. She can still feel it, the way she felt weightless and heavy all at once, like she was flying and being dragged down, both at the same time. She doesn’t say anything else, just presses her face into his chest and sobs, just once, the sound muffled against his skin.

“Jesus, Jules,” he says, his voice is shaky and his chest vibrates against her ear. He holds her to him, almost too tight, making her feel grounded and safe and like she never wants him to let her go. She takes a few deep breaths, forces herself to calm down, to stop clutching at him so desperately. It was just a dream, she tells herself silently, repeating it over and over again like that will somehow make it true. It was just a dream.

James doesn’t say anything else, and she presses her face against his neck and he runs his hand up and down her back. After a little while, she starts pressing kisses against his skin, soft and gentle, and his hand on her back dips lower and lower and he’s hard against her, and this time she does keep her eyes open, biting her lip to keep from yelling out, even though David is staying at Jack’s tonight and there’s no one here to wake up.

Afterward, she lays on top of him, forces herself to stop shaking, and he whispers “I love you,” over and over again into her ear and, she concentrates on that, scared of closing her eyes, afraid that feeling will come back if she does.

She feels James fall asleep pretty soon after that, but she stays awake, doesn’t fall asleep until it starts to get light outside, the bright California sun streaming in through her bedroom curtains.

**

James has been having trouble sleeping recently.

He dreams of the jungle and rain and cages and little yellow houses and blinding white flashes of light. When he wakes up, he can almost taste the salt of the ocean, smell the damp coolness of the earth, and he feels like he’s missing something he never had.

Everything in his life seems strange and off-kilter now. Work is weird since Miles and him suddenly have a whole other life history they have to deal with, and he only ever sees Juliet for an hour or so a night because she’s got a kid now and things aren’t as simple as they used to be.

He meets David after not too long, goes over to Juliet’s house for an incredibly awkward dinner. The kid seems nice enough, even if he does remind James a lot of Jack, which is a whole other issue. One that he and Juliet have deftly managed to avoid discussing.

He’s over at Juliet’s one Friday night for dinner when he brings up the Island. David’s spending the weekend with Jack and this is only the second time since the hospital that James and Juliet have been able to be alone together for more than two or three hours.

Juliet makes dinner and they hang out in the kitchen together, talking vaguely about their days, just like they used to, back in their other life. She tells him a story about the hospital, some surgery thing with Jack, and it’s not that he ain't interested, but he’s still not quite sure what to do with this whole new part of her life. She finishes her story and James just kind of stares at her, doesn’t really know how to respond.

The silence stretches on a little long, neither one of them saying anything. Then: “I was gonna propose, you know,” he says suddenly.

She looks over at him, and gives him a half-smile. “Oh yeah?” she says, and damned if she doesn’t sound skeptical as shit.

“Uh, yes,” he says, smiling at her. That weird tension evaporates, and he feels himself relax. “Got myself a ring and everything.”

She laughs a little and shakes her head, like the mere thought of it is completely absurd. “Where did you get a ring?” she asks, sounding like she doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. She hands him a beer from the fridge and pours a glass of wine for herself.

“I ordered one from the mainland,” he says, marveling at how ridiculous it sounds now, here in her nice normal Los Angeles suburban kitchen. “It came in on the sub about a month before…” he trails off and looks at his hands. He thinks he used to have a scar there, right across his knuckles. Got it hustling pool when he was 19 years old. Except that he didn’t because when he was 19 he was enrolled in a community college in Jasper, not scamming bikers in Boston.

“James?” Juliet says, sounding a little worried. He runs a hand through his hair and looks back up at her and, just—what were they talking about again? Oh, right. The ring.

She must sense something in his expression because she smiles at him a little too brightly and says, “So you had it for a month? And you still didn’t give it to me?” She takes a long drink of wine. “Cold feet?” she says, in this voice like she’s trying extra-hard to sound casual, like none of this actually matters anymore.

“No,” he says, staring down into his beer. “Nothin’ like that.”

She turns back to the stove and doesn’t say anything else for a few minutes. Whatever she’s making smells really good and this whole thing triggers that bizarre déjà vu feeling he’s been getting since the hospital. Like they used to do this all the time, sit around the kitchen together and talk and make dinner. And he guesses maybe they did, back then, back there.

“So where were you hiding it?” she asks eventually. She doesn’t ask him again why he bought a ring and then kept it for a month and then never gave it to her. Doesn’t ask why he never said anything, even when she was dying. (He remembers watching her die, the taste of her blood on his lips, and how nothing has ever felt as terrible as sitting alone with her lifeless body, down in there in the dark, silent ruins of the hatch).

“What?” he says, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

“The ring,” she says seriously. “Where did you hide it?”

“Um,” he says, and why are they even talking about this stuff, these things that only-kinda-sorta (never) happened? “Under the loose floorboard in the bedroom. The one right by the dresser?”

“Ah,” she says, like she knows exactly the one he’s talking about. In the house where they lived together, on the island he’s never been to, thirty years before they ever met.

“So,” she says, still in that too-casual tone. “Did you have a plan?” She’s still standing over by the stove, on the other side of the kitchen. It seems really far from where he is for some reason.

“Hell yeah, I had a plan,” he says, offended she’d think otherwise. “I was just waitin’ until the time was right, is all.” She turns around and raises an eyebrow and he realizes how lame that sounds. “I was gonna do it on your birthday.” He shakes his head and this whole conversation is just so absurd. “It was a stupid idea, I guess.”

“No,” she says sincerely. “It would have been nice.” She gives him a soft smile and then they just sit there awkwardly for a few minutes. She takes a drink of wine and he picks at the peeling label on his beer bottle, wondering what he should say.

“When Jack proposed,” she says after a few minutes, “he brought me to this absurdly fancy restaurant. Had the waiter bring the ring to the table in one of those covered desert trays.” She stops and laughs and gets this kind of nostalgic smile on her face. “It was completely ridiculous,” she says and shakes her head, taking a sip of wine.

She stands there, lost in thought, and James has never felt quite as terrible as he does in this moment. “Can we not talk about this, Jules?” he says quietly. He feels really tired all of a sudden, like all the energy has just been sucked out of his body.

“Yeah,” she says, sounding kind of surprised. “Sure.” She gives him this half-smile, one that says she’s upset. But he just doesn’t have the energy to deal with this right now. There’s a picture on the fridge of Jack and David at a baseball game, wearing matching hats and sticking their tongues out at the camera and James stares at it as he takes a long drink of his beer.

They really don’t talk about it any more after that. They eat dinner and talk about her day and some of his less upsetting cases and it’s fine. And if Juliet seems a little tense, well, that’s just how things are.

After dinner, they sit together on the couch and watch some old black and white movie about people who leave and never come back and the whole thing makes him feel kind of hollow and alone. They finish the bottle of wine, not talking as they watch the movie. Juliet lays so that her head is in his lap and it’s just going to take some getting used to, he guesses.

When the movie ends, they make their way back to her bedroom and he fumbles getting her clothes off. She’s wearing this pretty, kind of floaty shirt with all of these tiny buttons and it’s weird, not just unzipping a jumpsuit or pushing up a tank top. She helps him take the shirt off, their fingers clumsy with the buttons, and then pushes him down on the bed.

She kisses him a little too hard and he makes a noise deep in his throat, and kisses her back a little desperately. She pushes herself up so she’s on top of him, and he’s hard against her. Juliet rocks her hips against him until he gasps and then reaches down and helps him push off his jeans.

Once they both get their clothes off, she straddles him, and he watches her bite down hard on her lip as he slides inside of her. When he looks up, she’s staring down at him, her mouth open slightly, breathing heavy. She moves over him, leans down and kisses him, as he runs his hands up and down her back. He kisses her hard, all tongue and teeth and she gasps against his mouth. He moves his hands down, grabs her hips and rocks hard against her. He’s looking right at her when she comes, shuddering all around him and he jerks up into her, biting down on her shoulder with a muffled groan.

He runs his hands through her hair, tries to concentrate on how she feels pressed against him, but all he can think about is how many times she and Jack were here together, in this house, in this bed, in this lifetime where he and Juliet have only known each other a week.

**

Every night, Juliet dreams about falling, about clouds of black smoke, and white hot flashes of light, and this kind of unbelievable pain that comes right before dying. She had hoped the dreams would stop, get less intense at the very least, but they don’t. They keep coming, vivid and real and, every time she sleeps alone, she wakes up shaking and drenched in sweat.

She still hasn’t talked to Jack about it. She doesn’t know what to say.

She keeps busy, mostly. She’s got the hospital and David and a million other things that keep her occupied during the week. On the weekends, James comes over. He’s managed his work schedule so that they can spend pretty much the whole weekend together, which they do. Usually at her place, staying in bed the whole time, only getting up to shower or grab something to eat.

She’s only been to James’s apartment once, two days after everything happened; he seemed embarrassed the whole time she was there. There were empty beer cans and pizza boxes scattered across his coffee table, and the whole place was kind of dingy and sad and it made her feel awful, imagining him living there all alone.

She stood there in his little galley kitchen and felt so depressed she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from crying.

**

Three weeks after that night in the hospital, James stops at a jewelry store on his way home from work.

From the moment he walks through the heavy glass doors, he wants to leave. It’s all bright lights and too many choices and he ain’t got one fucking clue what he’s doing.

On the island, he didn’t have many choices, it was mostly a matter of how much cash he had plus what was available in whatever jewelry stores they had in Tahiti. He gave the supply run guy a general idea—diamonds, platinum, nothing too fancy—and got what he got.

But there are about a million choices here and the lighting’s really bright and the rings are really, really sparkly and expensive-looking and, fuck. He probably can’t afford any of this shit anyway. Sure he’s got more than when he was working for the hippies, but it’s not like cops are raking in money like fucking spinal surgeons or something.

James almost just turns around and leaves empty-handed, but he forces himself to stay and look around for a while. This whole situation is confusing and insane, but he’s determined not to fuck this up again. No matter when they are or where they are, he knows this is who he wants to be and if he needs to suffer through twenty minutes in a goddamn jewelry store to make it happen then that’s what he’s going to do.

So he braces himself and talks to the annoying old saleswoman and picks something out that he can afford. It doesn’t look much like the first ring, just one smallish diamond surrounded by a couple of blue stones (sapphires, the lady helpfully supplies), but he thinks she’ll like it.

He’s on his way over to her house—he’s decided just going to do it this time, no waiting for the perfect moment or planning ridiculous romantic gestures like he did back on the Island—when he remembers that it’s a weekday, so David will be there and nothing’s like it used to be.

He goes home instead, the black velvet box heavy in his pocket the whole drive to his crappy little apartment. When he gets inside, he flips on the TV and throws a frozen dinner in the microwave, taking the ring out of his pocket while he waits for his food to heat up.

It seemed like a good idea earlier today, he thinks, watching as the stones catch and reflect the overhead light in his kitchen. But now that he really thinks about it, thinks back to when he told Juliet about the ring from before, he realizes that she didn’t say nothing about saying yes.

**

A few days after their conversation in the kitchen, James calls her up and cancels on dinner. It’s not a big deal or anything, she was just planning on ordering take-out for the two of them and David, but it’s the first night since the hospital that they haven’t spent at least a few hours together.

Juliet tries not to read too much into it. It’s been a confusing couple of weeks and it’s probably good that they take a little time to themselves. So she tells James it's fine and she and David eat Chinese food in front of the TV. It’s nice, just hanging out with her son and watching old episodes of Friends. It makes her feel like her life is a little more normal, even though she can't shake the feeling like maybe all of this is destined to fall apart.

When her phone rings later that night, she’s already in bed. The nightmares are tapering off a little, but it’s still hard for her to fall asleep. She only hesitates for a second when she sees James’s name on the caller ID, presses the talk button and closes her eyes. “Hey,” she says, trying not to sound tired or upset.

“Hey yourself,” he responds and she can feel herself smile.

“What’s up?” she asks. She really missed him tonight and she wonders if it’s always going to be like this.

“You ain’t working this Saturday, right?” he says, sounding strangely nervous.

“No,” she says. “Why?”

“Well, uh, I though maybe you and David might want to go to a baseball game with me?” he says, sounding incredibly unsure of himself. Juliet doesn’t answer right away because of all the things she expected him to be calling about, that definitely wasn’t one of them. She guesses she’s silent a little too long because he clears his throat and continues, sounding even more hesitant. “It’s just, Miles gave me some tickets. He got them from his dad or some shit, I wasn’t really paying attention—“

“James,” she interrupts him. “That sounds like fun.”

“Okay,” he says, sounding not at all like himself. “Great. That’s great. Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeats and wonders why this is so incredibly awkward. “Well. Goodnight, James.”

“Hey, Jules,” he says, quickly before she gets a chance to hang up the phone. “I love you.”

Juliet smiles. “I love you too, James.”

**

Saturday turns out sunny and mild, the kind of day that’s sickeningly perfect for a baseball game with the love of your life and her magically-appearing teenage son.

Miles somehow managed to score some pretty amazing seats, so James and Juliet and David end up sitting right behind the Dodgers’ dugout. Not that it matters much. James can barely concentrate on the game, running his plan over and over again in his head, waiting for the right time to bring it up.

During the bottom on the fifth inning, Juliet announces that she’s going to get them something to drink and he watches her as she makes her way up to the concession stand at the top of the stadium. When he’s sure she’s out of ear shot, he slides over a seat so he’s sitting right next to David. The kid looks over at him and stares, and at that moment James really notices how much he looks like Jack.

“Hey, Dave,” James says, feeling incredibly awkward. “Can I ask you a question?”

The kid turns his attention back to the game and shrugs. Off to a great start already.

James clears his throat and doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Finally, he takes a deep breath and says, “Would it be okay if I asked your mom to marry me?”

David just turns at him and stares, doesn’t respond or even react really. It’s starting to get a little uncomfortable, those creepily familiar blue eyes zeroed in on him like that. James is about to say something else, make sure the kid heard him, when Juliet appears next to him. She’s got a beer for him in one hand and a Coke for David in the other and she sits in between them and kisses James on the cheek and then kind of smiles at David and asks if he’s having fun.

He nods at her and then glances over at James. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m having fun.”

When the game’s over they all get up and file up the aisle between the bleachers. They get stuck behind a line of people and David turns around, standing on the riser above James so they’re almost eye to eye.

“I guess I’d be cool with it,” he says eventually, like they were in the middle of a conversation.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“That thing you asked me earlier?” David raises his eyebrows like James is an idiot for not catching on. “I’m cool with it.”

“Yeah?” James says, and he realizes he’s kind of grinning like a moron.

“Yeah,” David says. He rolls his eyes a little, but he’s smiling, so.

“You guys coming?” Juliet calls down to them. The line’s moving again, the people stuck behind them getting restless and pushy, and she‘s almost to the top of their section.

David whips around and jogs up the stairs, leaving James standing there holding up the line alone. “Yeah, Mom,” David yells up to her. “We’re coming.”

**

The next weekend, Jack takes David out of town on some kind of male-bonding father-son fishing trip down in San Diego.

James is supposed to spend the weekend with her, but he’s been acting strange all week, distant and distracted whenever they’re together, like his mind is somewhere else completely.

When he shows up at her house that night, Juliet’s almost absurdly relieved. She’s had this feeling all day like he was going to cancel on her, call her up with some excuse about needing to work or not feeling well. But he’s there right when he told her he would be, wearing a beat-up leather jacket, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

He follows her inside his eyes trained on the floor. He tosses his bag on the floor by the front door and then jams his hands in his pockets.

“Everything okay?” she asks him gently, putting a hand on his arm.

“Yeah,” he says, but he still won’t look at her and he takes a step back, away from her. Her stomach drops and waits for him to say something else. To tell her that this, whatever it is exactly, isn’t working. 

“Juliet,” he says. He takes his hand out of his pocket and looks up at her for the first time since he got there. He looks worried and nervous and Juliet puts her hand on the wall next to her, bracing herself for what he’s going to say next. “Do you want to get married?” he says, and she just stares at him, trying to process exactly what’s going on.

It’s just—does she want to get married? She stands there, noticing for the first time that he’s holding a ring in the palm of his hand. When she looks up at his face, he looks even more worried and she realizes she should probably say something.

“Yes,” she says, and just like that his whole face changes. He grins at her and she leans in to kiss him, but stops abruptly, pulling back at the last second. James blinks at her, confused.

“David,” she says and that sick feeling in her stomach comes back. “I can’t just run off and get married, James. I’ve got a son now. I need to talk to him, to make sure this is okay.”

“I already talked to him,” he says, looking incredibly proud of himself.

“What?” she says, confused. “When?”

“Last weekend.” He smiles broadly at her. “He said he was ‘cool with it’,” he tells her, putting air quotes around those last couple of words and shaking his head a little.

“Yeah?” she asks, a giant smile on her face.

“Yeah,” he says, grinning back at her. She holds out her hand and he slides the ring on her finger, looking happier than she’s ever seen him. The metal is cool and smooth against her skin and when he wraps her arms around her and kisses her, Juliet finally believes that everything might actually work out all right.

**

They have a low key wedding, one Friday afternoon in late June down at the county courthouse. It’s a small ceremony, just the two of them and David and Juliet’s sister and Miles. James wears a suit and Juliet wears a white dress and it's pretty much exactly what he had hoped for.

A few months later, they move to a house down on the beach, him and Juliet. David stays with them every other week and it’s only a little weird at first, working out how exactly they’re going to be a family.

For their first anniversary, James gives her a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and an old Geronimo Jackson album, which makes her laugh.

They slip in to a life of quiet, easy domesticity, like some kind of funhouse version of their lives back on the Island. Juliet comes home from the hospital every day smiling and happy to see him, and they eat dinner together every night and, on the weekends when David is with Jack, they spend all day laying around in bed making up for lost time, and James tries not to spend every second of every day obsessively wondering how his life worked out so great, in the end.

*****

end


End file.
